She said there should be a broader consultation on the bill with smallholder farmers.

“We have a problem with that bill so they should listen to us first. We can come to an agreement because it is not as if we are against the entire bill,” she stated.

Mrs Adongo said this in an interview with the Graphic Business when the association, with support from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), launched a report which highlighted the challenges of smallholder farmers in accessing quality inputs.

“We are saying certain portions of the bill don’t suit us and the new Parliament should, therefore, take its time and review this bill before passing it,” she added.

The Plant Breeders Bill, among other things, is to ensure a genetic diversity of food crops as part of attempts to guarantee food security.

The bill, which was introduced in 2013 suffered a number of resistance by farmer groups, including the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, the General Agricultural Workers Union, Catholic Bishops Conference and the Christian Council of Ghana, which insisted that the bill was not in the best interest of the country.

They argued that the bill only promoted the breeders’ rights over and above the farmers’ rights.

They were even more incensed with the country’s decision to sign the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) Protocol at a time when the Plant Breeders Bill had not yet been approved by Parliament.

The ARIPO Protocol is a harmonised regional legal framework for the protection of plant breeders’ rights.

Based on these concerns, Parliament on November 11, 2014 deferred the consideration of the bill at the direction of the Speaker, Mr Doe Adjaho, who said it was important the content of the document captured the views and concerns the civil society organisations (CSOs) had raised.

Access to quality inputs

PFAG, with support from AGRA, has commenced a project that is aimed at ensuring that farmers have access to quality inputs leading to increase in higher productivity, market access and sustainable incomes.

The project seeks to ensure proper policies, laws and regulatory frameworks that promote farmers’ access to quality inputs through campaigns and policy advocacy.

Mrs Adongo said the association started the project based on the experiences of its members, among which was access to inputs.

She said to help advocate policies that would lead to farmers accessing quality inputs, particularly seeds and fertiliser, the association undertook a research to find out the problems of smallholder farmers.

“When you are embarking on an advocacy, it must be backed with evidence to show that there is a gap or a problem.  This is why we commissioned this research to use it as evidence and a working document for our advocacy,” she pointed out.

“The findings are now out and there are huge gaps that need to be filled so the next thing that we will be doing is to collaborate with all stakeholders to see how best we can fill in those gaps and ensure that the right environment is created for farmers to access quality inputs like seeds,” she added.

Findings from research

The Lead Researcher, Professor Joseph Yaro, said the research indicated that the gap among policies, programmes and implemented strategies in the input sector had left smallholder farmers at the mercies of inefficient markets for inputs.

He said the commercial private input sector had not been able to provide easy access to affordable and desirable seeds and fertilisers at the right times and locations.

Rather, he said traditional mechanisms of access predominated the seed sector, while the fertiliser sector struggled with distributional problems.

“Farmers preferred cheaper local varieties to expensive modern seeds. The link between fertilisers and modern seeds makes poorer farmers shy away from using these seeds due to high cost of fertilisers and other chemicals,” he said.

He noted that the poor access to fertilisers was mainly due to the market cost and administrative difficulties in accessing subsidised fertilisers.

Prof. Yaro said the findings emanated from an empirical study, which used a mix-method strategy involving expert interviews, a farmer survey, individual farmer interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis in five regions of Ghana straddling the different ecological zones.